


Prize Inside

by Roo_Bastmoon



Category: Honou no Miraju | Mirage of Blaze
Genre: Fluff and Crack, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-12
Updated: 2013-08-12
Packaged: 2017-12-23 07:02:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,479
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/923362
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Roo_Bastmoon/pseuds/Roo_Bastmoon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>On the road trip back to Matsumoto, Kagetora decides he wants fries with that.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Prize Inside

“I want a cheeseburger,” Takaya whines.

“How about some miso soup and su—”

“Fries,” the boy insists.

Naoe sighs. “You can’t keep eating like that.”

“Just watch me. There’s a McDonald’s. Pull over.”

Shaking his head, Naoe signals and changes lanes. “That food is very bad for you, Kagetora-sama.”

“Blah, blah,” Takaya grumbles. “I practically grew up on it. It’s like mother’s milk to me.”

“Why would—?” Naoe cuts himself off. Obviously, the boy didn’t get home-cooked meals because no one was home, bothering to cook them. It would be tactless to rub that in. “Your health will suffer and you will gain weight, if you keep eating—”

The boy lifts up his shirt, revealing chiseled abs. Naoe swallows. 

“Check these out. I’d say I’m in good shape.” Takaya shrugs.

Clearing his throat, Naoe turns into the parking lot. “I worry more about the state of your heart and arteries.”

“Haven’t got much of a heart left,” Takaya whispers. “Do the drive thru window; I love the drive thru window!”

Naoe obeys because, frankly, he hasn’t got the energy to oppose the boy’s will anymore. It’s been a long, long day-trip to some backwater temple to exorcise some troublesome Samurai, and at this point, he’d stop over and pick the boy up a coronary sandwich with a side order of arsenic, if it meant he’d stop fiddling with the radio buttons and fidgeting in his seat.

They pull up and Naoe rolls down the window. “What do you—?”

“Yo!” Takaya shouts, unbuckling his seatbelt, sliding across his seat, and resting his forearms on Naoe’s thighs.

Naoe can’t move, due to the shock.

“Welcome to McDonald’s. May I take your order?”

“I want a cheeseburger without ketchup, pickles on the top of the bun, a side of fries—no salt—and a chocolate—no, make that strawberry milkshake. And can I get a toy? I mean, I know I didn’t get the meal, but you can charge extra.” He turns to Naoe. “Miya likes to collect the toys. I dunno. Girls are weird.”

Naoe silently prays for Kagetora to hurry up and get his memories back, because he’s not sure he can handle a Happy Meal-generation seventeen-year-old. “I see.”

Takaya shifts more weight onto his thighs and Naoe bites his lip. If he were to get hard right now, it would suck beyond the telling of it.

The speaker crackles and the woman blares in his ear, “Cheeseburger no ketchup, side pickles, strawberry milkshake. What size fries?” 

“Hmm.” Takaya considers, staring up at Naoe. “You want some? They’re num~my.”

Naoe’s eyebrow twitches. “No, thank you, Kagetora-sama.”

“Have you ever tried it?”

Still twitching, Naoe takes a deep breath. “No.”

“Well, then, you have to.” Takaya nods. “Large,” he belts out the window, “and no salt.” The boy smiles at him. “They add too much in. Makes ’em soggy.”

“Oh . . . really?” Naoe says, afraid to breathe. 

Flipping around, Takaya puts his head in Naoe’s lap. The older man all but jumps. 

“Aaahhhh! It’s such a nice summer day. I almost wish we didn’t have to do this exorcising thing all the time. We could go to the beach. I haven’t been to the beach in forever. We took Miya, like, three years ago or something. She wore this awful lime-green bathing suit. She didn’t have boobs back then. Do you?”

“What?”

Takaya frowns. “Like to go to the beach?”

Naoe’s forefinger scrapes slowly along the rubber padding on the car’s windowsill; little black bits of grit get up under his fingernail. “No.”

“Why not?”

“I . . . prefer trees. Lakes, mountains.” Naoe struggles to find words. “Uh . . . Kagetora-sama?”

“We should go sometime, you know? To the beach. I bet you just haven’t been to the right one yet.”

Naoe rolls his eyes. “I’m over four hundred years old. There isn’t a beach in Japan I haven’t been to. You’re always dragging me to the sea . . .” He trails off.

“I am?”

Nodding, he sighs. He shouldn’t have said that; Takaya gets moody being compared to Kagetora, but, for all intents and purposes, it’s the truth. “Yes. When you were young, in our first life, you were obsessed with it. I always had to fish you out in time for your lessons.”

“Huh.” Takaya’s got a stray bang wrapped around his forefinger, twirling and twirling. “Not me, though. Him.”

Naoe’s other hand grips the wheel. “You are one and the same.”

“No, I’m fucking not!” Takaya shouts, jumping up so fast that he dislodges Naoe’s hand and bumps his head on the roof. He quickly falls back into Naoe’s lap. “Ouch!”

Naoe rubs the boy’s forehead. “Okay?”

“Yeah,” Takaya groans. “But I’m not your Kagetora. I’m just me. I’m not some amazing Feudal lord that’s in love with the sea and destined to save peoples’ souls or whatever. I’m just a street punk that likes cheeseburgers and bikes and watching chicks in bikinis at the beach, man.”

The older man smiles, cupping Takaya’s cheek. Kagetora has always been adorable when he lies.

For a moment, they connect, and Takaya’s eyes go wide as something electric sizzles between them.

“Your order, sir.” 

Takaya doesn’t move. 

“I need to get to the money,” Naoe murmurs. 

Instead of getting up, the boy fishes through the left pocket of Naoe’s pants, then the right, then paws his rear. Naoe jolts up with a yelp and Takaya swipes his wallet. The kid rifles through it breezily and hands Naoe eight hundred yen with a cheeky smile.

Naoe holds it out the window without breaking his eye contact with Takaya. He has to look away, however, when the woman hands him a greasy bag and a sweating, pink-filled cardboard cup. “Thank you.”

He hands this to the boy and accepts his change. “Do you intend to eat on my lap?” he asks casually. It’s a useless fight; he’s got an erection and there’s no way Takaya could miss it.

“I’m a man of many talents,” Takaya assures him, hand disappearing into the folds of brown paper and coming back with a fist full of fries. 

He watches the boy eat for a second and then puts the car in drive and carefully pulls up to the exit. 

“Here,” Takaya says, holding a fry up to his lips.

“No, thank you.”

“Aw, c’mon.”

“That’s quite all right.”

Takaya wags his eyebrows. “Just tryyyyy it.”

He wants to decline, but he finds his mouth opening. It’s . . . It tastes . . .

“Good?”

Naoe swallows. “That is pure sin.”

The kid’s grin is infectious. “See? Told ya.”

Emboldened, he reaches down with his left hand and begins to pet Takaya’s hair, straightening out the knot the boy has made in his bangs. Takaya ignores this, eating more fries. 

“You won’t get sick, will you? Eating upside down?” Naoe asks, giving him an easy out.

“Nah.” 

A few tense moments where the only sound is the rustling of the bag. Then:

“They forgot her toy,” Takaya complains, but he doesn’t sound surprised.

Naoe grunts sympathetically. 

Takaya puts the fries back and rolls up the bag, leaving it on the floor of the passenger seat. Next he takes a sip of the milkshake, and the sight of Takaya’s cheeks hollowed out as he sucks on the straw almost makes Naoe total the rental car. 

Takaya’s staring at him the whole time. He does his best to keep his eyes on the road.

“You’ve got sad eyes,” the boy says suddenly. “How come?”

Grimacing, Naoe murmurs, “Because my memories haven’t been erased, Kagetora-sama.”

“Naoe . . .”

“Four centuries watching over you, there are going to be sad things to think about, inevitably,” Naoe says by way of explanation. “But, there are a lot of good memories, too. Today will make another one.”

Takaya offers up the drink and Naoe takes a sip. He doesn’t like it; too sweet. Takaya puts it in the cup-rest and curls over on his side, facing the steering wheel. 

Naoe continues to pet his hair.

“You’ll always watch over me?”

“Yes,” Naoe says softly.

“Right then.”

Takaya sleeps for a little under an hour before they decide to take a rest stop. 

Naoe gets out and points to the water, sun-glistened and ever-changing: a blue mirage. Kagetora’s shimmering sea is an empty promise; a Happy Meal without the toy. 

Takaya eats his cheeseburger with the pickles on top of the bun now, even though it’s cold.

Naoe wrinkles his nose. “How can you eat that when it’s cold?”

The boy shrugs. “Used to it, I guess. I’ve had worse.”

And if he looks deeply enough, there’s a sadness in Takaya’s eyes, too . . . 

The next day, Naoe makes sure to send the Ougi family a brown paper package with a complete set of McDonald’s toys for Miya, still plastic-wrapped, inside. 

The note, however, is addressed to Takaya: ~Next time I’ll treat you to miso soup and sushi.~


End file.
